<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>It's Sad and It's Sweet by vanceypants</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23356324">It's Sad and It's Sweet</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanceypants/pseuds/vanceypants'>vanceypants</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Doomed Relationship, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, POV Second Person, Piano, Tragic Romance, alternate universe - i don't know what the fuck, check me drinking that Listening To Too Much Billy Joel juice, i don't know how to classify this one fellas, pianist squip</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 10:29:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,528</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23356324</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanceypants/pseuds/vanceypants</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeremy trades tokens for memories, for fantasies, for a romance he can never fully grasp. The Squip just wants someone who doesn't just hear his songs, but actually listens.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jeremy Heere/Jeremy Heere's Squip</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>It's Sad and It's Sweet</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Some pretentious thing I wrote. Warning for a brief scene of implied sexual assault. Very much open to personal interpretation.</p>
<p>As always, everything I write is fair use for whatever you want to make of it, as far as podfics or fanart or continuations or theories or headcanons or anything.</p>
<p>I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read.  I've been thinking about this concept for awhile, so it feels kind of good to finally have it out of my head.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>1.</p>
<p>There’s a bar sitting on the border of nowhere and eternity. It glitters with cheap lighting which glistens off of amber beer bottles, and the dust on the floor cushions the dances of the patrons who sway and rock over the cracked floor. It smells of whiskey and rose petals, and the bartender looks like a sunset, bright eyes and blond hair, a red streak weaving over the strands to match the scarlet of the burn scars on his face and his arms.</p>
<p>“The usual?” He asks. And you nod, like Michael told you to nod, because you’ve never been here before but this is a sacred place of traditions and loneliness.</p>
<p>His eyes have aged more than his face, a crinkle at the corners as he smiles, to try to masquerade a grief you’re not sure you’re ready to question. He seems the sort who wouldn’t mind if you asked. But instead, you slide a pack of cigarettes across the counter. It’s a brand you can’t pronounce with a font on the package you can barely read, but Michael told you a trade was needed and Wednesdays were cigarette days.</p>
<p>Thursdays were photographs.</p>
<p>Fridays were secrets.</p>
<p>But today is Wednesday, and Wednesdays are cigarettes, and you’ve never smoked a moment in your life, but he smiles and nods, and he drops your tokens on the counter in the same instant he slips the pack into his front shirt pocket. “It’s the small comforts,” He says, and you have a feeling he says it often, but you’re new and Michael never told you what to say to that. So you nod again, and take the tokens. They’re warm and they’re heavy and you run your thumb over the ridged edge of one as though to check their validity. Notched into reality, and you offer another nod.</p>
<p>He laughs. But you don’t think he’s laughing at you, so you try to smile, and shuffle towards the center of the bar.</p>
<p>The floor is raised in the center,  though it’s more of a shrine than a stage. Tables cluster around, half empty in the way that ached of former days of glory. At one point, this place had been filled to capacity. At one point, there had been joy in place of melancholy.</p>
<p>You think you might feel the same way about yourself.</p>
<p>The glass dome curves around the elevated flooring, trapping anything from entering, and anything from leaving, save for the single coin slot. You stare at it, as though you can ignore the great something that’s inside.</p>
<p>The piano’s ivory keys catch the same light as the beer bottles, and the sleek black of the body seems to absorb the very same rays. You follow the lines of its hefty size, the elegance of its legs, and then you take in the figure perched, rigid, at the bench, fingers poised over keys in anticipation.</p>
<p>Your mouth starts to open in greeting. But Michael told you not to speak. He’d know what you needed, whether you wanted it or not. </p>
<p>Your thumbnail scratches the ridges of the tokens. Five in total. Patterns of five, Michael assured you, held a magic that neither of them would ever fully grasp. But he’d been here before, and you hadn’t, so you trust that he knows all the things he doesn’t quite know, and if he doesn’t quite know, you can never hope to know them yourself.</p>
<p>You consider touching the dome, the glass so clear you’re almost certain you could float right through it. His plaque labels him The Squip, but you don’t know the meaning of those letters, the significance of that name. You wonder if anyone remembers. Michael told you this was something old, something above simple automatronics, and the inhumanity of the being within the dome is reminiscent of robotics while maintaining enough ethereal Otherness to make you question just what he might be.</p>
<p><i>Sad</i>, you think with an authority that you’re uncertain could have come from your own mind.</p>
<p>The Squip lifts his head and his eyes are icy blue as they stare into your own.</p>
<p>You don’t know if you want to smile or cry. So you shove the tokens into the slot. </p>
<p>One.</p>
<p>Two.</p>
<p>Three.</p>
<p>Four.</p>
<p>Five.</p>
<p>He doesn’t blink, but his lips twitch, and you think perhaps he’s stopping himself from saying anything too. You wonder if he has his own Michael to tell him the magic of numbers, the patterns of gift giving for tokens, to nod instead of speak, to let someone else figure out what you need and not what you want.</p>
<p>You think he probably doesn’t, and you’ve never been one to be sure of your thoughts, but this seems like a Truth. You think perhaps he might be the most lonely person in the bar, in the city, in the world, and this also seems like a Truth.</p>
<p>His eyes consume your everything, and you hug your arms around your cardigan to evade a chill that’s deep in your muscles, sinew, tissue, bones. His eyes drag over your face, and your body, up and down as though scanning.</p>
<p><i>You’re incredibly pitiful,</i> you hear in your mind, except it isn’t your voice, your conscience, your anxiety. You don’t know how you know it’s the Squip, but you know, another Truth. Michael never told you he would speak, or at least its closest approximation to speech. You think perhaps—you know perhaps—that his voice wouldn’t carry through the glass. You don’t know how the music will be any different.</p>
<p>And you don’t know where your coins went once you’d pushed them through the slot.</p>
<p>And you don’t know whether to be offended or heartbroken or captivated.</p>
<p>“I know,” You say instead. And if his voice can’t travel out, yours shouldn’t be able to travel in.</p>
<p>But he smiles.</p>
<p>He smiles, and it feels rare, and you place one hand against the glass. You expect someone to signal disapproval. You expect the bartender to pull you away. So you look towards the counter, and he’s wiping down the bar, and his sunset face lights up when he catches your gaze. He winks, and you blush, and then you look back into the dome.</p>
<p>The Squip waits patiently for your attention to return. Your heart flips as his fingers caress the keys.</p>
<p>He begins to play, and it fills your mind, vibrating and crescendoing. He builds the melody from the ground up, and your body quivers so much you have to place both hands against the glass to keep from falling.</p>
<p>He plays, and the bar slips away, piece by piece. You’re alone, you’re alone and you’re five years old. You’re five years old and you’ve fallen off your bike and split your knee on the curb. You cry, but no one comes to pick you up.</p>
<p>You’re alone, you’re alone and you’re 12 years old, and you don’t know how you know, but she’s not coming back, your mother is not coming back, this time it’s permanent and you don’t know how you know you’ll never see her again, but you’ll never see her again.</p>
<p>You’re alone, you’re alone and you’re 16 years old, and she’d smiled at you sadly as she read your love note. “I’m sorry,” She’d said, and now you’re alone backstage, alone and your face is wet but you don’t remember when you started crying. </p>
<p>You’re alone, you’re alone and you’re 17, and you’ve been rejected from every school you applied to, and you try to call Michael, but he doesn’t pick up, he doesn’t pick up, and by the time he’s home again, you’ll have buried your disappointment and convinced yourself you never wanted to leave in the first place.</p>
<p>You’re alone, you’re alone and you’re 20, and your mouth tastes of vodka and cigarettes and someone else’s saliva. His tongue had been so big, and his hands had been so rough, and his fingernails had scraped you rotten and raw, and you don’t know why he couldn’t hear you, he couldn’t hear you, you were screaming with everything but your voice, and they’d told you he was so nice, he was so nice, and that you needed to put yourself out there, but now you’re ashamed because you’re not bleeding and you’re pretty sure you should be bleeding but you’re not bleeding so it shouldn’t hurt this badly.</p>
<p>You’re alone, you’re alone and you’re 21. And you’re not yet 22, but you’re still alone. And you’re not yet 23, 24, 25, 30, 50, 80. You’re alone, and you’ll stay alone, and your face is wet but you can’t remember when you started crying, and you think perhaps you’ve always been crying.</p>
<p>Pitiful.</p>
<p>The three syllables tug you upward. The Squip surrounded you in memories, his music of some world you’ll never quite inhabit, though he’ll let you visit for five tokens, for a pack of cigarettes, or a photograph, or a secret with the bartender. Pitiful.</p>
<p>You open your eyes, and he’s stopped playing, turned in his bench to face you.</p>
<p>
  <i>You’re more than your memories, Jeremy.</i>
</p>
<p>You don’t know how he knows your name, or how he carves feelings out of songs. You’re no longer cold, but you’re still crying and you don’t remember how you learned these tears, and you can’t remember how to stop.</p>
<p>2.</p>
<p>There’s a bar sitting on the border of nowhere and eternity. And it must be a thursday, but you don’t remember how many thursdays have passed before it became this Thursday, this capital t Thursday with a significance you haven’t yet captured. But it’s a Thursday and you’re standing at the dome, and the Squip’s eyes continue to absorb you, though you don’t know if you have anything left to give.</p>
<p>You’d cried so surely that you’d thought you might drown in it that Wednesday. You’d cried and you’d screamed and you’d ached and you’d bled with everything except for blood itself. Until you had nothing left to escape.</p>
<p>And then you’d been light. You’d been light and fuzzy, the sort of fuzzy of warm blankets and fireplaces as the snow built mountains outside. The sort of fuzzy of saturday morning cartoons and nothing to worry about but phone calls from your best friend and the next bowlful of cereal.</p>
<p>Michael had said he knows what you need. And you don’t want to think that you’d needed any of that pain, but here you are anyway.</p>
<p><i>I’ll play you another, if you’d like.</i> There’s a pause, but you don’t dare to fill it with words. <i>Free of charge. Sit down. Close your eyes.</i></p>
<p>Your body sinks to the ground, and there’s a shaky breath of relief at removing the pressure on your legs. Your palms cradle the curvature of the dome.</p>
<p>His hands move back over the keys.</p>
<p>And you don’t remember coming back. You’d given the bartender a photograph you’d found on the internet, a still frame of a favorite film. You’d prepared how to explain your choice, its significance, even as you realized it might not fit the criteria, but he’d smiled and tucked it in his pocket and he’d slid the coins across. “It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a friendly face,” He says it playfully, and it’s part of the act, but you can’t help but think he’s known little companionship. </p>
<p>“I like your hair,” You’d stuttered. And the bartender had blinked, his smile had slipped, the burns in his face blending as his cheeks flushed.</p>
<p>“I liked your picture.” He’d hesitated. “Next time, give me your name, okay? We can trade.”</p>
<p>You wish you’d asked to do it today. But instead you’d taken the coins and approached the dome.</p>
<p>And Squip had curled his words into your head.</p>
<p><i>I’ll play you another, if you’d like.</i> And his command for your to sit down, and close your eyes.</p>
<p>And so you’d sank to the ground. And let your eyelashes flutter.</p>
<p>And that’s where you are, dust under your body, hands covering the glass, and the coins sit heavy in your pocket. You think perhaps you’ll bring them back tomorrow. You think perhaps you can’t handle anymore memories, but you’re here anyway. You’re here, and you’re prepared to cry this time, you’ll remember when it begins and when it ends.</p>
<p>
  <i>I’m not going to hurt you.</i>
</p>
<p>And you already knew that. But he sounds so sad, lips unmoving but sentiment so heard.</p>
<p>And he plays again. It’s bright and it skips and it gallops and your eyes squeeze tigher, closed, as he lulls you into another bubble of thoughts. </p>
<p>He plays you a romance.</p>
<p>Your body is warm. It’s warm and you radiate beauty. You know because He looks at you with such gentleness, though the details of His face are smudged and inarticulate.</p>
<p>You don’t know who He is. But you know that He loves you, and you know that you love Him.</p>
<p>The music builds and he holds you. He holds you and you know you could kiss, but instead you lay your head against His chest and listen to His heart. His hands are warm and heavy against your back, and you know it’s not real, you know this is artificial, the magic of robot or angel or demon or whatever the Squip is crafted to resemble. You know there’s something technological or supernatural at play here.</p>
<p>Michael said it was hallucinogenic, but it wasn’t a Truth. It was a guess. And you don’t think he’s right, but you also don’t know what to replace it with.</p>
<p>Except you think perhaps the best idea is to not question it at all. You fall back into the music, and he gifts you a romance. A romance of heartbeats and warm hands and gentle cologne. A faceless love that makes you ache almost as much as the memories had, but your face is dry when your eyes open again.</p>
<p>“Thank you.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t smile this time, the Squip. He lifts himself from his bench, and he’s both taller and smaller than you expected. He walks towards you, stiff and unsteady. You almost expected him to be tethered to his piano, yet here he is. </p>
<p>He sinks to his knees, looking at you as his forehead rests against the glass, one hand raised to match the pattern of your left hand against the dome. They cover each other in every way except for actual human touch, separated by mere centimeters of glass. You move closer, and rest your forehead in the same spot his rests.</p>
<p>
  <i>Did you like my song?</i>
</p>
<p>There’s a tenderness to his vulnerability. </p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>
  <i>Please come back.</i>
</p>
<p>And you reach for the coins in your pocket, to show him you have the change to afford to come again. But they’ve already faded away. You’ll figure out what to trade to make sure you return.</p>
<p>3.</p>
<p>There’s a bar sitting on the border of nowhere and eternity. And somewhere between the days and nights spent trading cigarettes and smiles and secrets with the bartender, somewhere between lonely memories and impossible fantasies, between ballads and waltzes and arpeggios, you’ve fallen in love.</p>
<p>It’s a strange sort of love, this feeling that fills you when you enter the bar. You love the softness of your footsteps through dust. You love the glitter of lights in amber beer bottles.</p>
<p>You love the details you trade with the bartender. He gave you his name and he gave you his story, and you can’t share it, you can’t give it away, because he gifted it with such care, but you carry it within your chest with a heaviness of companionship and compassion. You love the details, even the sad ones, and you love him.</p>
<p>And you love the Squip.</p>
<p>Except that’s not the Truth. </p>
<p>You’re in love with the Squip.</p>
<p>And you’re not sure when it shifted. When the romances took tangible form, when they’d shifted from inarticulate to his details specifically. Electric blue eyes and the curve of soft lips. His hands are warm and delicate and kind, and he thinks you’re pitiful, but he also thinks you’re beautiful.</p>
<p>And it’s more than the songs, the fantasies he paints you. Because he finishes the song today, and he tells you himself.</p>
<p>
  <i>You’re beautiful.</i>
</p>
<p>“I know.” And then you giggle. His hand presses against the glass—he comes to you every time now, between every song, hand to glass. Neither of you leave fingerprints. “I mean, I know you think that. I, uh, I’m not actually-”</p>
<p><i>You’re beautiful.</i> He frowns. His fingers curl. Yours match his movements instinctively.</p>
<p>“I love-” His eyes move to meet yours. And your lips trap your thoughts before they can spill. “-your songs.”</p>
<p>
  <i>I know.</i>
</p>
<p>“I wish I could, um, could listen to them forever.”</p>
<p>
  <i>I know.</i>
</p>
<p>“I…I wish I could know more about you too.”</p>
<p>You feel his hesitation. His hand pulls away from the glass, slow and syrupy and bewildered, and he shakes his head almost as slowly.</p>
<p>
  <i>There’s nothing to know. This is all I am.</i>
</p>
<p>“That’s not true,” You insist. “That’s not…I want to know.”</p>
<p>Because you can’t be in love if you don’t know him. You can’t be in love just because he plays you songs and makes you feel. You can’t be in love just because he gives you artificial romances, crafted from songs and magic and technology, crafted from the future and the past and things that can never be. You can’t be in love, but the Truth is that you are. You are, and you don’t know him, but he knows you, and he loves you too, and that’s the Truth too. You’re certain of it.</p>
<p>You don’t know why. Surely you can’t be anymore interesting than anyone else-</p>
<p><i>You’re wrong. You’re very interesting.</i> This time he sounds amused, and maybe he’s amused at your expense, but your throat quivers with the urge to giggle. You press it down. <i>You’re pitiful, and you’re beautiful, and I’ll cherish you even after you’re gone.</i></p>
<p>You think he might mean that he’ll outlive you. But his eyes say something else.</p>
<p>You don’t know what.</p>
<p>But they say something.</p>
<p>“I want to know you too. Please.”</p>
<p>He walks away. And he sits at the bench.</p>
<p>And he plays. He plays. And he has no ages. He has no stages.</p>
<p>He plays you loneliness, but you don’t see it. You feel every color, but you don’t see it. He plays you loneliness, he plays you a glory of a full bar of people who never bothered to listen, who collected their memories and their fantasies, who dropped their coins, but they never bothered to listen. He plays you the degradation of a dance floor, cracked and dusty even with the shuffle of the regulars who’d aged and curdled and never bothered to find somewhere else. No one ever bothers to find anything better, but no one ever bothers to listen.</p>
<p>He’s alone, and he doesn’t have the milestones to list it, but he has his dome and he has his piano and he has the memories of everyone who drops their tokens through the single slot connecting him to the outside world. There’s a magic to this that he can’t keep for himself, so he gives it away for tokens that dematerialize before he can ever catch them. He’ll keep nothing but his dome and his piano and-</p>
<p>
  <i>You. I get to keep you.</i>
</p>
<p>His eyes are sad, and his hands still against the keys. His shoulder slump and his posture wilts and you expect tears that never come. You don’t think he can cry, and it makes you want to cry all the harder.</p>
<p>“I thought you said I’d, uh, I’d be gone.”</p>
<p>
  <i>I’ll still have a part of you.</i>
</p>
<p>His voice is a wisp within your mind. You touch the glass, but he doesn’t come back to it, turning on the bench, his back to you. You think, perhaps, you asked too much of him, or that he gave too much of himself willingly. You think, perhaps, there’s a beauty to his shyness, and that you want to hold him. You wish you knew how to gift music in return, because you think you might have been good at it if you’d been given the chance.</p>
<p>
  <i>Please don’t come back again.</i>
</p>
<p>He’d started out teaching you how to cry.</p>
<p>And he’ll leave you with making sure you remember how.</p>
<p>“Then come with me,” You blurt. </p>
<p>And he finally turns around. He looks at you, wide eyed and bewildered and frightened and hopeful, all wrapped together. He reaches towards you, his fingers curl, and then he drops his arm again. He’s staring towards you, but you know he’s looking at the glass. And it’s so thin, and so weak, and you think you might be able to break it, but he shakes his head as though knowing what you’re thinking. No. </p>
<p>And it’s the Truth, it’s True you can’t break it. You both know you can’t break it, you can’t take him from here. He’s stuck in the bar, and the bartender too, and the patrons will keep coming night after night and spend their tokens for songs they’ll never quite listen to. </p>
<p>And you don’t know why he doesn’t want you back. You don’t know. You don’t know and now you can’t listen either. You can’t listen, not to that.</p>
<p>“i’m sorry.” You can’t leave him here alone. You’ll have to come back. Your ears feel fuzzy, the sort of fuzzy of TV static and emergency broadcast signals. </p>
<p>4.</p>
<p>There’s a bar sitting on the border of nowhere and eternity. The lights flicker about, half burnt out, and the shuffle of the patrons is tipsy and uneven. And the bar is unmanned, but you place your cigarettes on the counter all the same.</p>
<p>You have no tokens to offer as you step towards the dome. </p>
<p>Cracks in the glass splinter and leave shards on the floor, not enough force to completely break through. Fingerprints, red, glitter wetly from the inside. You brush your own digits against the stains from the outside, and prick yourself upon the shards of glass.</p>
<p>He’s not at the bench this time.</p>
<p>He’s kneeling on the ground, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking. None of the patrons are looking, and you wonder how long he’s been like this. His hands are balled into fists, and he stares at them, eyes blurry and wet. His skin is bruised and crusted over with blood, and you never even knew he had anything to bleed. </p>
<p>“Squip,” You sink to your knees, and you touch the glass again, the smooth area where he hadn’t tried to break through. The prick of your finger leaves blood on the outside.</p>
<p>He looks up. His lip wobbles. “I told you not to come back.”</p>
<p>His voice sounds smaller coming from his lips. You whimper, and rest your forehead against the glass, and wait for him to come closer.</p>
<p>The legs on his piano are shattered and the keys litter the ground, and the blackness of its body seeps outward, creeping against the ground and swallowing what remains of the lights.</p>
<p>“I wanted to come to you,” He adds, and he sobs, once, before his bruised hand clasps against his own mouth. He tries to stifle himself, shaking, shaking, shaking, and you want to slam your own hands against the glass, but you think perhaps the Squip wouldn’t survive outside of his bubble.</p>
<p>And you’re selfish.</p>
<p>You want to hold him, you want to hold him, you want to hold him, and he wants to be held. He needs to be held.</p>
<p>You should give him what he needs, but you want him alive. </p>
<p>So you don’t break the glass. You rest against it, and you leave streaks of your blood as you pet and scratch at the sleek surface that he’d been unable to break through. Until he shuffles forward on his knees.His hand drops from his mouth, and he weeps openly, forehead resting against yours, his own bleeding hands bleeding with your, pressed against the minimal centimeters of glass that keep you apart.</p>
<p>“It’s okay,” You say, and it’s not the Truth. He knows it. You know it. But you swear you can feel him shiver, cold and frightened and alone, always alone. And he needs to pretend he believes it, even though you both know it’s not the Truth, you both know it’s not okay, and it won’t be again, and maybe it had never been okay at all, but oh he’d played you sonatas so beautifully that you’d been unable to believe anything else.</p>
<p>So you sing, your voice off key. You sing him lullabies and apologies and love and his crying tapers off.</p>
<p>“You’re really tone deaf,” He mumbles. He’s tired. He’s tired and he loves you and he thinks you’re beautiful and you’re tired and you love him and you think he’s beautiful.</p>
<p>And maybe you can convince yourself it’s enough.</p>
<p>5.</p>
<p>There was a bar sitting on the border of nowhere and eternity. A sale sign collects the same dust which had once stifled echoes on the cracks of the dance floor. You pry the doors open and ignore the scream of the hinges.</p>
<p>The bar is empty. You didn’t bring cigarettes or photographs or secrets, but you stare as the bartender’s name and his story and his sadness and his joy, his gifts to you without payment, thump out of rhythm with your heartbeat, a clash to make sure you know it’s his, that it’s his Truth. You think, perhaps, you’re the only legacy left to prove it had once been.</p>
<p>The silence drowns your memories and your fantasies, but you cling to your love and your Truth and you move towards the elevated center of the bar.</p>
<p>Glass crunches under your feet, and your toes nudge a black key aside, letting it collide with its brothers. The rest of the piano has been removed, or perhaps it has faded like the tokens once had. You stand within the remains of the dome, a half shell that silences your movements. You reach out, and press against it from the inside, and feel what he’d once felt.</p>
<p>He’s gone.</p>
<p>He’s gone, and you’re still here. </p>
<p>You almost expect the dome to swallow you in his place. You, the last who’d heard him, who’d listened and listened and loved.</p>
<p>But you step back out, and glance back once more, and try to see him within your memories, without the music this time. You swear you can feel his hand against your back, you swear you can feel your ear against his chest, you swear his heartbeat is timed with yours, unlike the stories and the sadness and the joy you carry from trading secrets and photographs and cigarettes. This synchronizes until you can’t tell one from the other. You swear it’s the Truth, even though you’ve never felt him at all.</p>
<p>You step outside into the sun. You don’t know which side of the border you’re walking towards. But you keep walking.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
  <ul>
    <li>
        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26667172">Drinking Whiskey Alone</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Its_Aight/pseuds/Its_Aight">Its_Aight</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div></div></div>
</body>
</html>